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Friday, March 13, 2015

Matt Cutts’ announcement heralds the end of an area, really, because quick-fire guest blogging was one of the last vaguely acceptable techniques by which one could quickly manipulate rankings. While Google’s tougher stance has got some online marketers upset, others have applauded Cutts for tightening up this final area in which wild-west-SEO’ers could ply their trade. Now, almost for the first time since the birth of the internet, the playing field has begun to level out. Webmasters who put time and effort into their design, online communities and content creation are going to set the standard from now on.What is domain Authority?Domain authority is a measure of the power of a domain name and is one of many search engine ranking factors. Domain authority is based on three factors: Age, Popularity, and Size.SEO gurus Moz can be credited with the metric known as DA or domain authority. Moz’s own search algorithm gauges the quality of any given site based on a huge complex combination of factors including onsite and offsite, taking in to account things such as diversity of Backlinking domains to come up with a score between 0 and 100. A brand new site, for example, will have 0 whereas a very high authority site might have 80/100. Domain Authority gives those working in the field of online marketing a useful metric by which to consider the apparent quality of any site.Do read it here: http://codeboxr.com/blogs/why-domain-authority-is-most-important-for-seo-3

Saturday, October 18, 2014

“Did you know that an external links going out to these high authority sites can boost your site SEO? When search engine spiders crawl your site and see a link and follow it to BBC or Huffington Post, they weight it as a positive. The trick is to find organic ways to link to these sites.”

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Issue:Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a webpage by way of a dynamic script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is considered dynamic. Many websites choose dynamic content over static content. This is because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating each static by hand is a monumental task.There are two types of URLs: dynamic and static. A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database. The dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in the HTML code, the data is changed in the database.But there is a risk when using dynamic URLs: search engines don't like them. For those at most risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are e-commerce stores, forums, sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or WordPress, or any other database-driven website. Many times the URL that is generated for the content in a dynamic site looks something like this: http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=dateA static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn't change, and doesn't have variable strings. It looks like this: http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm

Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn't make sense to them.A search engine wants to only list pages its index that are unique. Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).For example, let's look at three URLs: http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=67890&sort=date http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=dateAll three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages look the same: http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.phpNow, you don't have unique pages, and consequently, the duplicate URLs won't be indexed.Another issue is that dynamic pages generally do not have any keywords in the URL. It is very important to have keyword rich URLs. Highly relevant keywords should appear in the domain name or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, rank websites.The study involved taking hundreds of highly competitive keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software, and comparing factors involving the top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 40-50% of those with the keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and MSN has an astonishing 85%! What that means is that to these search engines, having your keywords in your URL or domain name could mean the difference between a top ten ranking, and a ranking far down in the results pages.Solution:So what can you do about this difficult problem? You certainly don't want to have to go back and recode every single dynamic URL into a static URL. This would be too much work for any website owner.If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user's (or a search engine's) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache.This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.For example, when someone requests this URL: http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htmlThe server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as: RewriteEngine on RewriteRule thread-threadid-(.*)\.htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this, with no one the wiser: http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache's Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.If you are not particularly technical, you may not wish to attempt to figure out the complex Mod Rewrite code and how to use it, or you simply may not have the time to embark upon a new learning curve. Therefore, it would be extremely beneficial to have something to do it for you. This URL Rewriting Tool can definitely help you. What this tool does is implement the Mod Rewrite Rule in your .htaccess file to secretly convert a URL to another, such as with dynamic and static ones.With the URL Rewriting Tool, you can opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into the box, press submit, and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of your website. You must remember to place any additional rewrite commands in your .htaccess file for each dynamic URL you want Apache to rewrite. Now, you can give out the static URL links on your website without having to alter all of your dynamic URLs manually because you are letting the Mod Rewrite Rule do the conversion for you, without JavaScript, cloaking, or any sneaky tactics.Another thing you must remember to do is to change all of your links in your website to the static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search engines due to having duplicate URLs. You could even add your dynamic URLs to your Robots Exclusion Standard File (robots.txt) to keep the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of your methods, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, you should ideally have no links pointing to any of your old dynamic URLs.You have multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in your website whenever possible. When it's not possible, and you need to keep your database-driven content as those old dynamic URLs, you can still give end-users and search engine a static URL to navigate, and all the while, they are still your dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if this method was considered "cloaking", he responded that it indeed was not, and that in fact, search engines prefer you do it this way. The URL Rewrite Tool not only saves you time and energy by helping you use static URLs by converting them transparently to your dynamic URLs, but it will also save your rankings in the search engines.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

It has been an incredibly eventful year in terms of updates from Google. Major 2013 changes included further releases of Penguin and Panda, Hummingbird taking flight, and the shift away from providing keyword data thanks to encrypted search.Google has taken major spam-fighting steps that have shifted the playing field for SEO professionals and anyone trying to get their site on the map in the year ahead.At the same time, the need for an online presence has never been stronger, while the landscape has never been more competitive. The potential to make a real ROI impact with your company’s online marketing initiative is greater than ever. But defaulting to so-called “gray hat” tactics no longer works. Instead, SEO professionals need to step up and embrace a more robust vision of our area of expertise.

You might call it a move from tactician to strategist: the best and most successful players in our space will work to anticipate Google’s next moves and respond to them with laser focus. In a sense, the infinite digital game of chess that is SEO will continue, but the rules of the game have become more complex.Through a mix of what I’m observing and reading and what I’m seeing working out in the field today for my clients, here are some suggestions for companies and SEO professionals that are thinking ahead to 2014 for their digital strategies.Everything You Learned in 2013 is Still Relevant, Just AmplifiedWhen you look closely at the targets of the 2013 updates (ie, websites that cheat their way to the top of the rankings or provide no value to visitors), I anticipate seeing these carried forward throughout 2014. We can continue to expect micro adjustments to Panda and Penguin that continue to target both link quality and content quality.Smart marketers will benefit from keeping a close eye on their link profiles, and performing periodic audits to identify and remove inbound links built unnaturally. High quality content investments will remain critical.A solid SEO performance in 2014 is going to be built on a foundation of really understanding what happened in 2013, and what these changes mean both strategically and tactically for SEO. SEO really has changed in critical ways.Content Marketing is Bigger than EverContent marketing will move from buzzword to mature marketing movement in 2014. From an SEO perspective, Google will be looking at companies that have robust content marketing efforts as a sign that they’re the kind of business Google wants to support.Think of all the advantages of a good content strategy:Regular, helpful content targeted at your audience.Social signals from regular sharing and engagement.Freshness or signs that your site is alive and growing.Increasing authority connected to your body of work.Sound familiar? It’s the very approach to SEO that all of Google’s recent updates have been designed to shape.What changes you need to make in 2014 depends largely on where your company stands now in relation to an active content marketing strategy. Companies with existing content strategies will need to assess the role of mobile, specifically.If you’ve just begun to move in the direction of content marketing, it’s time to really commit and diversify. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to take the plunge.Social Media Plays an Increasingly Visible RoleSocial media has been a major player in the digital marketing landscape for the last few years. First we saw the rise of mega platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In the last couple of years, visual content from networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and various micro-video services haa swept through.Today, diversification is a major trend: depending on who you’re targeting, it’s no longer enough to be active on a single network. In fact, The Content Marketing Institute recently released a study that the most successful B2B marketers are active on an average of seven networks. Companies and SEO professionals will need to be asking the following questions in the year ahead:Are we taking our social media seriously? Are we employing the pillars of strong profiles, good content, reciprocity, and engagement?Is easy social sharing enabled for all of our content?Does our content strategy include a dissemination phase that includes maximizing its potential for distribution through social networks?Are we active on the social networks that matter in our industry?Are we active on the social networks that matter to our customers?Are we active on the social networks that matter to the search engines? (See below for more thoughts on making that strategic investment).Does our social media marketing strategy stimulate the level of social signals required to achieve our goals?Google’s updates are likely to increasingly rely on social signals as active human curation of good content.Invest in Google+In addition to strengthening your overall social media marketing position, it’s going to be absolutely critical that you are investing in your Google+ presence.Moz’s most recent study of ranking factors confirms that Google+ is playing an increasingly significant role in a solid SEO ranking. The immediate areas to focus on include:Establishing Google Authorship of your content, and tying it to your Google+ account. Authorship, which brings your body of content together, will play an important role in the SERPs as well as strengthening your Author Rank.Those +1′s add up. It isn’t clear exactly how much Google +1′s directly contribute, but it’s fair to say that it’s a major factor in the “social signals” component of Google’s algorithm. I expect this to increase in the year ahead.Hummingbird Was Just the Tip of the Mobile Iceberg2014 will be the year of mobile SEO. Hummingbird was just the very small visible tip of a very large iceberg as Google struggles to respond to the rapidly shifting landscape where half of all Americans own smartphones and at least one-third own tablets. Those statistics will probably shift upward, maybe dramatically, after the 2013 holiday season.As a result, your site’s mobile performance matters to your SEO rankings. Properties that you’re trying to rank need to be designed first for mobile and then scaled up for the big screen. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website, this needs to be your top priority in terms of SEO and design investments for 2014.Some underlying changes that happened with Hummingbird, including the increasing importance of both semantic search and Knowledge Graph, will continue to grow in influence. Practically speaking, this is to help prepare the search engine for the rise of voice search associated with mobile. But it also has direct implications (which we’re still learning about) for broader SEO. This is one area that you should pay close attention to, from how you structure your content to what content you choose to put out.The Long Versus Short DebateWhich is better, long content or short content? The answer depends on who is creating the content, who is reading it, what it’s about, in what context it’s being consumed, and how you define “better.”For the purposes of this argument, which form of content will help you best prepare to rank well in 2014? Frustratingly for some, the answer is more “both/and” than “or.”Vocus recently cited a study that showed that the top 10 results for a specific keyword search tended to be more than 2,000 words in length. The validity of that study has been debated, but it’s probably fair to say that length is a proxy for depth of expertise and value delivered to the reader.Google values both expertise and value. As a result, we’ve seen a trend where the “minimum desirable length” for text-based content has shifted from something in the range of 550 words to articles in the range of 1000-plus words.Yet we’re also confronted with the reality of the mobile device: if I’m reading about something I’m only moderately interested in, there’s a high probability that I won’t want to scroll through 2,000 words on my iPhone. That leaves content marketers faced with the challenge of producing mobile-friendly content, which tends to be (in a sweeping generality) much, much shorter.Proposed solutions have run the gamut from content mixes to site architectures that allow you to point readers to specific versions of content based on their devices. This is great for the user experience, but where it all comes out on the SEO algorithm front remains to be seen. For now, I’ll just acknowledge that it’s an area of concern that will continue to evolve and that it’s something you should keep your eye on.Advertising and PPC has a Shifted Relationship with SEOSince Google made the decision to encrypt the vast majority of its searches, our ability to access keyword data for research purposes has been restricted. However, there’s a loophole. Keyword data is still available for advertisers using PPC on Google’s platform.More SEO budgets may be driven toward PPC simply because access to the data may otherwise be restricted. It’s also possible that we’ll see the release of a premium Google product to give us access to that data through another channel from Google in the year ahead.Guest Blogging Remains One of the Most Effective Tactics, With a CaveatGuest blogging has exploded in the past year, and it’s going to remain one of the most effective means of building quality inbound links, traffic, and branding exposure in 2014. However, it’s absolutely critical that you’re creating high quality content, and using extremely stringent criteria when selecting your target sites.In other words, you need to apply the same high ethos approach to guest blogging that you do to the rest of your SEO efforts. If you dip a toe into spammy waters where guest blogging is essentially scattershot article marketing with a 2014 update, you’re likely to be penalized in a future Penguin update.ConclusionThis has been a year of significant change in the SEO industry. Even contemplating strategies for 2014 can feel staggering.The good news is that looking back, it’s easy to see which direction the trends are heading in terms of the years ahead. Staying the course on solid white hat tactics and paying attention to a few priority areas that are shifting rapidly should give you the insights needed to improve your organic search visibility in 2014 and beyond.